My sense of our problem with time is that as these mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our sense of time is as the present going past to future, codified as measures of duration.

While the evident reality is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is this presence, as events coalesce and dissolve, future to past.

There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.

Energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color and sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.

The energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated come and go, future to past.

Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past.

As it is the digestive system processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns, with the circulation system as feedback in the middle, it seems the mind is more arbiter of consciousness, than its source. The point of decision and focus.

As galaxies are basically energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in, there seems to be a larger relationship at work, but I can't find many willing to go outside convention.